MOST of the people I know, who own McMansions, live there only because they reside in
"diverse" places, where owning an expensive home is what it takes to be safe from
"Them".
(Who "They"
are, varies from place to place.)
The endless regulations regarding lawns and vehicles
(and other things), are designed to discourage
"Them" - even should
they have a big lawsuit settlement, three fatter-than-usual disability checks, and drug-dealing/human-trafficking money on the side.
A recurring theme, is the male hetero surgeon, who lives in a five thousand square foot McMansion, in a metro where there's nobody worth knowing
(I'm putting myself inside his mind, you understand...). The big money, for most docs, is in places with horrible climates and no natural scenery, largely populated by people whom nobody with options would choose to be around. Freestanding homes - huge,
EXPENSIVE ones - tend to be the only viable options, in metros like that. He has a deluxe mattress set, and nice sheet sets/duvet covers/pillows/shams. One closet has some clothes - not many, though. Across from the bed, there's a TV. But now, with online erotica, there's zero clutter from DVDs or mags. His office has a desk, ONE chair, and a closet for storing papers/records. One corner of the predictably-vast "Dedicated Master Suite" will have workout equipment - not much, though, since he has gym/club memberships.
No matter what he looks like, an inexhaustible stream of women will give out free samples, in the hopes of catching him - because he's a surgeon. The very second one of them starts prissing around, talking about
"doing something with" the house - becoming territorial and possessive and bossy - she gets kicked to the curb, and replaced. He LIKES the empty kitchen, the empty entertaining spaces, the four other bedrooms standing empty, the two empty bays in the garage, the second floor which does not see a human for months or years at a time. In his mind, the absence of superfluities, is part of
"being a WINNER".
He sticks his income into investments, waiting for the day when he's rich enough to fly off to someplace where people are worth his time, or when he meets a girl who makes enough money to be human in his eyes
(generally, another surgeon).
However, for now, the big house in the gated enclave, is what he has to have, to be able to sleep, whenever he gets to sleep, without being kept awake by the sound systems/stomping and door-slamming/"performance mufflers"/neglected dogs of people who probably should not even exist. When he was in residency, being worked nearly-to-death,
noise made by problem people in cheap places, nearly KILLED him. He will pay whatever it takes, to be insulated from people like that.
And then there are all the other professionals - people who've been under pressure to study, study, STUDY - to play sports and do whatever other "extra-curriculars" are needed for getting into
"good schools", and
"being normal". When this has been your life, for as long as you can remember, you tend to regard EVERYTHING but achieving, as being not just expendable, but actually
in your way.
Family is in your way. Friends are in your way. Furniture is in your way. All that sports equipment, crammed into both storage rooms off the garage, AND the 'Bonus Room', AND the floored part of the attic, required for the kids you didn't really want
(but had to have, because it's "normal" and "expected") - is IN YOUR WAY. You grew up, under pressure to memorize impossible amounts of information/do your projects/play your sports
(and if you weren't straight-'A'/four-sports, you were a LOSER, and an embarrassment to Mom and Dyaaaaaaaaaaad). There was not enough time. There was no time for any extra anything. You resented EVERYTHING distracting you from the grades you had to make, and the sports you had to play.
Nothing mattered, beyond fulfilling those performance expectations. Now, still under pressure to "make Partner"/get that grant/fulfill the Continuing Education requirements/complete the project/prevail in the merger, you see family and friends and furnishings as things you cannot avoid having
(because sometime you might have to USE them for something, and because you'd be "abnormal", without them), but which are really, mostly, just IN YOUR WAY.
A really big house, is actually necessary, for providing enough room for you to have some personal moments and personal space, amid people you don't particularly want, and volumes of STUFF you cannot avoid owning.
(Just go inside "Dick's Sporting Goods" and remember that huge chunks of what you see in that store, end up in the homes of the hapless parents of the hapless children who're tacitly FORCED to use that stuff for their essentially-mandatory "activities").
My recurrent nightmares, from which I'm awakened when I start screaming, have shifted from dogs and snakes and encounters with groups of predatory
"youths" and malfunctioning elevators in scary hospitals......... to crystal-clear, ulta-explicit-down-to-their-backstories visions of our children, ALL getting on one of my "Uncles"'jets - planes barely big enough to be considered
'Transatlantic Size' - and going down on the way to Ibiza. Sometimes, my husband has already been snuffed by competing interests. Sometimes, that's what's happening in the dream - with or without Babs being kidnapped. Sometimes, it's already happened, and she's dead. Always, there's some sort of
"This time, it's not a dream. This time, it's REAL" narrative, presented in some form - explicit or implicit.
My dreams are telling me that I could end up ALL ALONE.
Currently, we have a Dordogne-style 'Mas' in the PNW
(not intended as a 'chateau' or a 'castle - just an unassuming, bourgeois 'Mas') on seven levels, if you count the 'Souterrain' guest/staff levels following the ravine. The Aspen ranch has more bedrooms - but it's the typical
"Logs & Molesworth" kind of thing - not our style, really, but where we see the friends we made, when we were young, and doing summer rentals in the Malibu Colony. The Manhattan place, really just an
"au sein de la famille" hotel/timeshare, is only lived in by one of our Decorator's interns, who gets it back
"Photoshoot-ready", between incursions by ourselves and my not-particularly-nice extended family
(together, we own the corporation which holds the building). It's a big stage set - one floor of an old factory - done up in
'Hell's Kitchen Intellectual Quirky', but with more design resolution than is typical of NYC, since we're shallow Southerners, accustomed to higher aesthetic standards.
But if I
were suddenly all alone? I could definitely go austere. In town, I'd have something tiny. I'd get the right people to vouch for me. I'd assign a team, to complete the ridiculous volume of disclosure paperwork. I'd actually DISCLOSE all that The Dakota wants us to disclose. And I'd take a tiny attic unit like this:
https://streeteasy.com/building/the-dakota/97 - about the size of the garage apartment I dreamed of having, when I was dreaming of running away to college, and working, as one of the unseen ugly people, in the back of some big office, somewhere
(those were BIG dreams, when I was a kid). But in the Dakota, I'd be around people like myself, and AWAY FROM people who threaten people like me. Even with "The Multiple"
(money you have to park somewhere, to assure 'The Board' that you'll always have enough to pay all you have to pay), I could be in for well under ten - thrifty and austere, up there under the rafters.
If, for the beach, instead of building on Meadow Lane
(https://www.google.com/maps/place/Me...!4d-72.4340207), as we're apparently going to have to do, to be around people who share our worldview.......
if, tomorrow, 'We' became just 'I', I'd scale-back my needs, and contemplate whirling off into the looming vastness of infinity, from
this vantage point:
https://hamptons.curbed.com/2018/1/1...tons-price-cut
Once again, I'd be paying a premium, to be shielded from PEOPLE. But as for luxury and show? ....
MNEH....
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